Understanding helps in dropping the ego. | Philosia: The Art of seeing all
Understanding helps in dropping the ego ie past, memory, mind.
14 May 1974 am in Buddha Hall, Osho used to call himself as mirror, as white ☁️ cloud. So disciples asked many questions to him for clarification. So a series of talks was started titled ‘My way: The way of the white cloud’ for answering all those and related questions and a book was printed with same title.
Now it is very clear that any female or woman can also get their kundalini awakened. So if a person is moving inward for kundalini awakening or for path of surrender ie Bhakti Yoga or Practicing meditation while progressing in their inner journey through Gyan Yoga or Sankhya Yoga. The biggest hurdle is ego, mind or past/future. Past includes conditioning by society due to country, religion, education, profession or position etc.
Osho in his discourses says many times that the journey to remember/discover our self or soul is alone to alone, and we need to be so much alone so that there should not be any clothes on us ie we need to move ahead naked. So by naked he means without any iota of ego, because ego is like our clothes and we start identifying ourself with them. While ego is like onion, you keep on peeling it and in the end you find nothing in it! So this nothingness is needed to become our clothes, then only we are going to discover our self or soul or Reality.
Osho used word like ‘Conscious act’ or action fully aware of yourself ie ‘awareness’ or ‘awareness meditation’ and ‘Understanding’ as synonym to describe the same phenomenon that helped millions to get awakened to in discovering their reality.
In it’s chapter no 5, Dropping the ego now, a disciple asked:
Question 1
BELOVED OSHO,
YOU SAID THE EGO CAN BE DROPPED THIS VERY MOMENT. CAN THE EGO ALSO BE DROPPED PROGRESSIVELY?
Osho:- The dropping always happens in the moment and always in THIS moment. There is no progressive, gradual process for it. There cannot be. The happening is instantaneous. You can’t get ready for it, you can’t prepare for it, because whatsoever you do — and I say whatsoever — will strengthen the ego.
Any gradual process will be an effort, something done on your part. So you will be strengthened more and more through it. You will become stronger. Everything gradual helps the ego. Only something absolutely non-gradual, something like a jump, not like a process, something discontinuous with the past, not in continuity with it — only then the ego drops. The problem arises because we cannot understand what this ego is.
The ego is the past, the continuity, all that you have done, all that you have accumulated, all the karmas, all the conditionings, all the desires, all the dreams of the past. That whole past is the ego. And if you think in terms of gradual process, you bring the past in.
The dropping is non-gradual, sudden. It is a discontinuity — the past is no more, the future is no more. You are left alone here and now. Then the ego cannot exist.
…
If you can remain unoccupied, if you can remain satisfied without being needed, the ego can drop this very moment. But these ifs are big. Meditation will prepare you for these big ifs. The happening will happen in a moment, but the understanding will take time. It is just like when you heat water. It becomes hotter and hotter and hotter; then, at a particular degree, at one hundred degrees, it starts evaporating. Evaporation happens in a single moment. It is not gradual, it is sudden. From water to vapor there is a jump. Suddenly the water disappears, but time is involved because the water has to be heated up to boiling-point. Evaporation happens suddenly, but heating takes time.
Understanding is just like heating. It takes time. Dropping of the ego happens like evaporation. It happens suddenly.
So don’t try to drop the ego. Rather, try to deepen your understanding. Don’t try to make water change into vapor. Heat it. The second thing will follow automatically, it will happen.
Grow in understanding. Make it more intense, more focused. Bring all your energy to understand the phenomenon of your being, your ego, your mind, your unconscious. Become more and more alert. And whatsoever happens, make it a point to try to understand it also.
Somebody insults you and you feel anger. Don’t miss this opportunity; try to understand why, why this anger. And don’t make it a philosophical thing. Don’t go to the library to consult about anger. Anger is happening to you — it is an experience, a live experience. Focus your whole attention on it and try to understand why it is happening to you. It is not a philosophical problem. No Freud is to be consulted about it. There is no need! It is just foolish to consult somebody else while anger is happening to you. You can touch it. You can taste it. You will be burned by it.
Try to understand why it is happening, from where it is coming, where the roots are, how it happens, how it functions, how it overpowers you, how in anger you become mad. Anger has happened before, it is happening now, but now add a new element to it, the element of understanding — and then the quality will change.
Then, by and by, you will see that the more you understand anger, the less it happens. And when you understand it perfectly, it disappears. Understanding is like heat. When the heat comes to a particular point — one hundred degrees — the water disappears.
Sex is there — try to understand it. The more there is understanding, the less you will be sexual. And a moment will come when understanding is perfect — and sex disappears.
And this is my criterion: whatsoever the phenomenon of inner energy, if it disappears through understanding, it is sin; if through understanding it deepens, it is virtue. The more you understand, the wrong will disappear and the right will become more rooted. Sex will disappear and love will deepen. Anger will disappear and compassion will deepen. Greed will disappear, sharing will deepen.
So whatsoever disappears through understanding is wrong; whatsoever becomes more rooted is right. And this is how I define good and evil, virtue and sin — PUNYA and PAAP. A holy man is a man of understanding, nothing else. A sinner is a man of no understanding, that’s all. Between a holy man and a sinner the distinction is not of sin and holiness, it is of understanding.
Understanding works as a heating process. A moment comes, a right moment, when the heating has come to the boiling-point. Suddenly the ego drops. You cannot drop it directly — you can prepare the situation in which it happens. That situation will take time.
Two schools have always existed. One school is of sudden enlightenment which says enlightenment happens suddenly, it is non-temporal. Another school, just contradicting the first, is of gradual enlightenment; it says enlightenment comes gradually, nothing happens suddenly. And both are right, because both have chosen one part of the phenomenon.
The gradual school has chosen the first part, the understanding part. They say it has to be through time, understanding will come through time. And they are right! They say you need not worry about the sudden. You simply follow the process, and if the water is heated rightly it will evaporate. You need not bother about evaporation. You simply leave it completely out of your mind. You simply heat the water.
Another school, quite the opposite, which says enlightenment is sudden, has taken the end part. It says the first thing is not very essential: the real thing is that that explosion happens in a no-time gap. The first thing is just the periphery. The real, the second thing, is the center.
But I tell you both are right. Enlightenment happens suddenly. It has always happened suddenly. But understanding takes time. Both are right and both can be interpreted wrongly also. You can play tricks with yourself. You can deceive yourself. If you don’t want to do anything, it is beautiful to believe in sudden enlightenment. Then you say: “There is no need to do anything. If it happens suddenly, it will happen suddenly. What can I do? I can simply wait.” That may be a self-deception.
Because of this, in Japan particularly, religion simply disappeared. Japan has a long tradition of sudden enlightenment. Zen says enlightenment is sudden. Because of this, the whole country became irreligious. By and by, people came to believe that sudden enlightenment is the only possibility: Nothing can be done about it — whenever it is going to happen, it will happen. If it is going to happen, it will happen. If it is not going to happen, it will not happen. And we cannot do anything, so why bother?
In the East, Japan is the most materialistic country. In the East, Japan exists as a part of the West. This is strange, because Japan has one of the most beautiful traditions of DHYAN, CHAN — Zen. Why did it disappear? It disappeared because of this concept of sudden enlightenment. People started deceiving themselves.
In India, another phenomenon has happened…and that’s why I go on saying again and again that the human mind is so deceptive and cunning. You have to be constantly alert, otherwise you will be deceived.
In India, we have another tradition, that of gradual enlightenment. That’s what yoga means. You have to work for it, work hard through many lives. Discipline is needed, work is needed, and unless
you work hard you will not achieve it. So, it is a long process, a very long process — so long that India says one life is not enough, you will need many lives. Nothing is wrong with this. As far as understanding is concerned, it is true.
But then India believed that if it is going to be so long then there is no hurry. Then why be in such a hurry? Then enjoy the world…there is no hurry and there is enough time. And it is such a long process that you cannot achieve it today. And if you cannot achieve it today then the interest is lost. Nobody is so keen that he can wait for many lives. He will simply forget it.
The gradual concept has destroyed India; the sudden concept has destroyed Japan. To me, both are true, because both are half-parts of a whole process. And you have to be constantly alert so that you are not deceiving yourself.
It will look contradictory, but this is what I would like to say to you: It can happen this very moment, but THIS very moment may take many lives to come. It can happen this very moment, but you may have to wait for many lives for THIS moment to come.
So work hard, as if it is going to happen this very moment. And wait patiently…because it is not predictable. Nobody can say when this will happen — this may not happen for many lives.
So wait patiently as if the whole process is a long gradual development. And, work hard, as hard as possible, as if this can happen this very moment.
-Osho, My Way: The Way of the White Clouds ☁️, #5 Dropping the ego now.
My suggestions:-
Awareness Meditation is the way worked for me and I tried it first during brushing my teeth in the morning after trying 8–10 meditations over period of 15 years! So there is no need to reinvent the circle for you. May be you too find it suitable otherwise with Dynamic meditation and/or Kundalini in the evening it is suitable for most of the people. There are 110 other meditation techniques discovered by Indian Mystic Gorakhnath about 500years before and further modified by Osho for contemporary people that one can experiment and the suitable one could be practiced in routine life.
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For references of content on Osho, Copyright © OSHO International Foundation, An MP3 audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho(dot)com or you can listen or watch his discourses @ OSHO International channel of YouTube where you can get subtitles in language of your choice or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library. Many of Osho’s books are available online at Amazon.
My suggestions:-
Osho International Online (OIO) provides facility to learn these from your home, through Osho Meditation Day @€20.00 per person. You can learn Dynamic meditations from disciples of Osho. OIO rotate times through three timezones NY,Berlin and Mumbai.
